Awesome.
The Straight Dope comes through again.
I spent hours researching tv’s and looked at dozens of listings.
Never saw that one at Walmart.
I really appreciate the help.
It’s really not hard. Get an HDMI cable. Plug one end into the tv and one into the direct TV box. Plug in the TV. That’s about all there is to it.
25" TVs used to be what you got if you were well off. I looked in the final, 1989 Sears catalog and a store brand 25" TV was about $800 in today’s money. Google tells me you can get a store brand 24" TV today for about $80. The people that actually wanted small TVs were dwarfed by the people that just couldn’t afford big ones.
By 1989 black and white TV production was about extinct. Beforehand few people wanted them but bought them because they couldn’t afford color but by 1989 technology had improved such that just about anyone could afford at least a 13" color set, just anyone can get a 24-25" TV. And the much smaller size means you can fit them into the same spot in the bedroom that formerly held a much smaller viewing area tube TV.
Just because a TV is ‘smart’ and can make the tea, stack the dishwasher and walk the dog, does not mean that you have to use those features. As said above - plug it in and ignore the rest (you may want to tone down the brightness a bit though).
This is true, it’s actually easier now than it used to be because what required multiple cables is consolidated into one.
I remember having to hook up an RF adapter to an antenna with coax then attach it with 2 screws onto the back of a TV. I’ll take a modern TV setup over that.
I have a “smart” TV also and I don’t bother hooking it to WiFi. My Xbox One handles all that streaming/browsing stuff for me.
It was a few years ago, but there was an episode of the Office where we saw Steve Carell at home, and the TV he had mounted over his fireplace was so small that he had to watch it standing up.
That is a $200 plasma screen TV that you just killed!
‘Smart’ in the context of a TV really just means it spies on you and reports your habits back to the manufacturer. It also integrates things like Netflix into the TV. Maybe I’m just turning curmudgeonly, but I would much prefer to have a dumb TV with several HDMI ins and use a Roku for streaming. I’ve resigned myself to knowing my next TV will be ‘smart’, since dumb TVs are going the way of the dodo, but under no circumstances will it know my wifi password.
I’m curious why you don’t trust smart TVs but you trust the Roku which is doing the same thing. In fact, many smart TVs today have Roku software inside, so such a smart TV is essentially identical to a dumb TV with an external Roku. Now, I work for Roku, and I’m certainly not saying you shouldn’t trust them, but I’m just wondering why you trust software when it’s a box but not when it’s in a TV.
The scope is more limited. My roku only knows about apps I use on the Roku, such as Netflix, and not about things I watch on TV. It doesn’t know about things I watch on my laptop on the TV screen. It doesn’t have a mic. I’d love to trust Roku - or any tech - absolutely, but I don’t, so limiting its scope limits the damage.
You don’t need TV because nobody watches TV. They watch cable, or satellite, or DVD/Blu-Ray, or stuff streamed from Netflix. All you need is a screen. My Blu-Ray and Apple TV and (and I assume Roku and its ilk) all do Netflix. My TV comes over a wire to a box with HDMI out; and it does Netflix now too. And so on.
In the good old days, the trick was to force that feed into a gizmo that received over-the-air TV channels. Today, the roles are reversed. All you need is a screen that will show what’s coming out of the box beside it. There are dozens of these things - they are called “monitors” when the box beside them is a computer.
(BTW, I’m typing this using a 43" 4K LG TV I bought at Costco over a year ago for $US379. It’s like having 4 1080P monitors glued together, but no seam…)
The only downside is … no remote. Well many of those 15-inch TVs didn’t have remotes because they sat beside your bed, so you could reach over and change the channel. Your cable box or Apple TV has its own remote. The only thing you need to do with the screen itself is turn it on and off. Guess what? Many monitors do that automatically.
Like md2000, I’m using what we would have called computer monitors 10 years ago for small TVs. One in the kitchen and on in my office. HDMI cable from the Dish Joey with the Joey handling volume control, auto-sleep handles the on-off duties.
Since this question seems to have been solved…
- I was 9 years old. My brother and I got a 12" RCA BW TV to use. It was ‘cheap’ enough and we where big enough to carry it and move it around. Mom and Dad didn’t know that I was staying up watching Johnny Carson on an ear plug. Gosh, it even had UHF! Collapsible, retractable antenna! Wood grained plastic box!
But a modern 24-inch TV takes up far less space than a 24" CRT. That’s why there’s so little demand for small TVs. You couldn’t fit a 24" CRT in a small spare bedroom or kitchen counter, but a modern 24" LCD will fit in most places.
[QUOTE=aceplace57;20783294I’m building a wall shelf big enough to handle one that size.[/QUOTE]
Have you looked into an actual wall mount, rather than a shelf? They often are under $30. Since the size of the room is an issue, having the TV mounted on the wall gets it out of the way.
Do an Amazon search for TV mounts, and select the size range you are looking for. Something like this would even let you push the TV flat against the wall when not in use, and put it out to a better viewing angle when you want to. You will still need some place to put any cable boxes that you need.
I would never in a million years buy a no-name electronic device from Walmart. IMHO, you are throwing that money down the drain. The TV will die within months. Here is a thread in which we discussed how Walmart pressures manufacturers into producing shoddier versions of their products.
And notice that its rating with Walmart customers, not exactly the most tech savvy people in the world, is pretty crappy: 3.7 out of 5 five stars. So even if it keeps working for a while, it will probably not have a great looking picture.
For $130 you can get a Samsung 24-inch set that I guarantee will have a vastly better picture and keep working after the trash truck has carted away the box. LG has similar sets at similar prices. Spend up to $150, and you can get a 32-inch TCL smart TV recommended by Amazon. All have user ratings of four stars or higher.
In addition to these three brands, you could trust Vizio (a slight step down in quality and reliability, IMHO) as well as Sony and Panasonic, which are at least as good as Samsung, but don’t have anything in the price range we’re talking about. Supersonic and Spectre? No-name garbage.
You believe that larger sets will “overwhelm” the room, but trust me, it is very easy to get used to a larger picture. When I moved in with my wife about 7 years ago, she had a 32-inch set in her bedroom, and was appalled when I replaced it with my 55-inch set. Within a few weeks it became her new normal, and she couldn’t imagine how she lived with the little 32-incher. Our current TV is 70 inches.
The main reason you can’t find many small sets: bigger ones are cheap and everyone loves bigger pictures. You will too, once you try it.
commasense is right on. You’re buying this TV for your mother, who I’m guessing is at least in her 60s, and she’ll be watching it from 12 ft away? 13" will be useless. Get a 30" name brand with a wall mount and she’ll actually be able to enjoy it.
The OP asks “Why Have Small Bedroom TV’s disappeared from the market?”, mentions tablets and doesn’t think his question has been answered? People who want to watch TV in bed can easily do so on their tablet or phone. The Galaxy View has an 18.4’’ screen. People who are very particular about having a device that’s 1: a TV 2: small 3: in the bedroom aren’t enough of a market. Maybe there’s a niche market for selling to old people who recoil at changing their media/bedroom habits. Make sure to give it an 80s or 90s feel by changing channels with clickety knobs or a brick-like remote.
Yes, the only difference between a TV and a monitor is the one has a tuner to get over-the-air. Since analog disappeared, that’s less of an issue. Fancier TV’s used to have a “cable TV in” to allow you to get the basic channel set (and sometimes, higher channels) direct from the Coax cable - but then along came pay-to-view, cable bundles, etc. and a separate box is needed to do all that work of filtering and decoding cable signals. So again - the main role of a screen nowadays is to be a screen and let some other box be the decoder or whatever to convert cable, streaming internet, discs, etc. to a simple video signal. Add to that if you want DVR, then something else has to do the same job for the recorder… so a built-in tuner on the screen is redundant mostly unnecessary.
I’m curious whether anyone actually watches TV over the air? I’m guessing since the analog apocalypse the proportion si fairly small.
A “how do I cut cable?” thread pops up weekly in a local Facebook group I’m on, and everyone ends up with an antenna. It’s really hard to get local news without one, and at least here you need it for Browns and most Ohio State football games. I’ve been using mine daily to watch the Olympics, used it for the Super Bowl and all the award shows. You know that OTA is digital now right? I get some 30 channels with my rabbit ears. I don’t know if actually watching OTA is anywhere near as hours spent watching via Roku et al, but as far as I know an antenna is an important part of the cable-cutting setup.